In the wake of the incident, the government has taken steps to tighten gun laws
The Australian government has announced plans for a national gun buyback program following last week’s mass shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stated on Friday that the scheme is expected to remove hundreds of thousands of weapons from circulation.
The Bondi Beach attack left at least 15 people dead and more than two dozen injured. The attackers—who allegedly pledged allegiance to the terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS)—targeted a Hanukkah celebration organized by the local Jewish community.
Police reported that one of the shooters held a firearms license and legally owned six registered guns, all of which were recovered from the scene.
Albanese has made domestic gun policy a key focus of the government’s response. On Monday, Australia’s state and territory leaders agreed to pursue stricter national firearms rules.
Measures being discussed include accelerating the rollout of a national firearms register, limiting how many guns an individual can own, requiring Australian citizenship for a gun license, and further restricting the types of weapons allowed. The government will need to pass parliamentary legislation to fund the proposed buyback scheme.
The program is expected to resemble the one introduced in 1996 in response to the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, which killed 35 people. That program ran for a year and resulted in the destruction of roughly 650,000 firearms. Under the new scheme, owners who surrender their guns will be compensated.
According to research organization The Australia Institute, civilian gun ownership has since risen to more than four million firearms nationwide—about 25% higher than in 1996, or roughly one gun for every seven Australians.
Similar efforts in other countries have faced challenges. In New Zealand’s 2019 gun buyback—launched after the Christchurch mosque shootings, where an Australian white supremacist killed 51 people—the scheme’s online notification platform was temporarily taken offline after a vulnerability was found that could have exposed the personal data of thousands of law-abiding gun owners.